Tag: chaka Khan

After making it through December buying “only” about 140 albums, I’ve once again picked up a large collection to enjoy searching through to find some hidden gems.

Here’s what the car looked like when I pulled into the driveway:

All together it was 31 postal crates of 12″ singles and LP’s from primarily the 1980’s and 1990’s, all loaded into one large American sedan. In this situation, and old “boat” of a car still has some practical value.

What’s really cool to me is that this collection is from when the popularity of vinyl started to fade, so there could be some real gems in here. Once I got it into the house, it looked a little more manageable:

Once i get it sorted, I fully intend to return the US Postal crates. I expect I will find several additions to my personal collection, a lot of good value for resale, and still be able to sell the remains for more than what I paid for the original 31 crates.

It was billed as 2000 records, but my initial samples average about 80 per crate, so it might be closer to 2500 records. My random samples at the sellers location indicated the records are in very good condition, most showing no visible wear on the vinyl, while the covers have some wear and some labels, as it was part of a club DJ’s collection who worked int he 80’s and 90’s.

So while a lot of it isn’t going to be what I typically buy, for the price I couldn’t pass it up. I got everything for $150. I was very quickly able to find that much of value in things I could resell in just a few crates, so it was worth it. Essentially I expect to get everything I want to sell and keep for free, and flip the rest for a couple hundred dollars.

I started looking through the first crate, plus a few that were stacked on top of it. Totally random, it was just the one sitting next to me at my laptop. In the first 50 albums, I found 10 that combined are worth $150. Here’s the first 10 that should pay for the entire lot:

Not exactly my cup of tea, but they should sell relatively quickly. At that pace of finding ‘winners’, assuming 2,000 albums, I have potentially $6,000 worth of vinyl (before taxes, shipping, fees, etc), and that’s just the first pass at the things I can define value. I think a lot of this dance music and singles have a market, I just need to find it.

So there’s perhaps $3600 profit to be had from 20% of the collection. Not a bad return on $150. And that doesn’t count selling the other 80% for what I paid for it originally, or probably a little more. As i finished the first crate, I’m at about $220 of value, time 31 is close to $7k, so I’m excited about this buy. Even if I’m half wrong, it’s a great return on $150, and it’s great entertainment. I’m excited to play some of the singles of songs from my youth.

The seller had many people contact him, but I was the only one to commit to purchasing under the condition that the collection was what he described it as being. I was confident that a large lot of 1980’s and 90’s pop and rock vinyl would have some real gems, and i probably couldn’t go wrong. When you know what your objective, be confident and take a few risks.

This sort of makes up for the lot in December which was largely in poor condition, but also had a ton of 45’s as part of the deal. I’ll still make some money on that deal, but not every buy is going to be as good as this one. And it may not pan out as great as the initial sample, but that’s OK.